


Even Dragons Have Their End

by LadyFeste



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day, Gen, Series Finale, finale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 17:04:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1752194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFeste/pseuds/LadyFeste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've arrived at the end of all things, and all Arthur can do is ask to be held as he dies. Merlin refuses him. All spells have counters, no poison is incurable, some elders are not to be trusted, and dragons are not always quite so dragonesque.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Dragons Have Their End

"Merlin, please," Arthur breathed, clutching weakly at his chest. He’d been stripped of his armor when Gaius had bound up his wound, but he was shivering harder than the cool evening breeze warranted. He had another hour to live, he guessed—more strength than he would have expected, but not enough to push to the Lake of Avalon as the warlock carrying him wanted. "Just….just..hold me…" 

Merlin froze, recognizing the beginnings of a goodbye when he heard it. He’d heard enough of them, after all. “No,” he said, and he dropped Arthur to the ground and walked several steps away. 

Arthur gasped in pain as he was lowered into the grass and turned his head to the side, tears forming in his eyes. He coughed, his heart breaking all over again as the servant walked away. “Please…don’t leave me…”

Merlin ignored him, raising his voice into a mighty roar, shouting incomprehensible words to the sky. Arthur clutched at the bandaging at his side, struggling to see through clouding vision what Merlin was doing. 

A great flapping sound echoed over head, and in seconds, the Great Dragon had flown into the valley. Merlin heard Arthur’s breathing, already so rough, catch in alarm, but ignored that, too. Kilgharrah, looking worse than ever before, greeted Merlin with a slight incline of his head. Then he saw Arthur and bowed. “Oh, young warlock, I am sorry. Some deaths have been foretold—” 

"Shut  _up,_  Merlin snapped, and behind him Arthur coughed. Merlin’s fist clenched. If he didn’t do this quickly, the shock would kill the king. “Don’t you  _dare_ tell me you’re sorry. I know the prophesies. I found them, those old glyphs in the Crystal Caves you were so insistent I stay away from. I found them when Morgana shut me in and I learned them all, and I know this foretold death isn’t supposed to happen yet. You planned this. You manipulated all this into being.” 

Kilgharrah blinked, then raised his head and cast a haughty eye down to the warlock below. “So I did. So what? I’d say I did you a favor. I did not defile the prophecy by setting things in motion before their time. I inspired a golden age that arrived sooner and will last longer.”

"It wasn’t your decision to make," Merlin yelled. "And you didn’t do it out of kindness, you did it out of revenge."

"Uther  _destroyed_ our kind and caused more spilling of innocent blood than you will ever know. This is justice.” 

"This is  _vengeance.”_

 _"This is my bloodright,_ " Kilgharrah hissed, snapping his jaws at Merlin, who didn’t even blink. "All Pendragons deserve to die; the whole line of them must be eradicated. Since you took care of Morgana and  _that_ one’s on his last breath, the only one left to deal with is the brat growing in the belly of the queen.” He showed his teeth again, and Arthur cried out at the words—none of them had any idea Gwen was pregnant before now. 

Merlin’s hands were both curled into fists now, and he was shaking with rage. “This is wrong, and you know it.” 

"What do  _I_ care for right and wrong?” the dragon scoffed. “I am dying. I will not last the year. And Arthur will not last the night.” 

The warlock set his jaw. “Heal him.” 

"Why should I?" 

"Because I’m asking, and you wronged me. Because I’ve never asked for a thing from you, and you’ve never done your duty by me. Because you owe me. Because your  _obsession_ with me is worth more to you than the end of the Pendragons. Because if you don’t, I’ll  _kill_ you with my  _bare hands.”_

The dragon’s nostrils flared as he considered the warlock’s words, and the only sounds in the valley were Arthur’s labored gasping and Kilgharrah’s tail swishing through the grass. At last, he tilted in his head in a draconian shrug. “It cannot be done. The sword that pierced Arthur was forged in dragon fire.”

"Oh, don’t give me  _that,_ " Merlin said with a dirty laugh, shaking his head. "I am  _Merlin Emrys,_ and I know magic doesn’t work like that. The spell may be rare or difficult or unknown, but there’s always a way. Absolutes are unnatural. For every action, there is a reaction; every poison has an antidote; every spell has a counter. That’s balance. That’s nature, that’s  _magic._ Arthur can be healed, and you  _will_ heal him.” 

The dragon looked annoyed. “..There is a way.” 

"Tell me." Kilgharrah remained silent. "You will  _not_ disobey me.” 

"You cannot order me to do anything. You are not my  _lord._  If anything, I am  _yours._ " 

Merlin  _roared_ at the dragon, his voice growing rough and serpentine the longer the shout went on. Kilgharrah squared his shoulders, pushing his head back and his wings up in a threatening manner. “Is that a  _challenge,_ young warlock?” 

"Why don’t you change and find out?" 

Kilgharrah chuckled. “What, so you can make good on your promise and strangle me? You change, little hatchling, and come learn your lesson. I may be dying, but I could still crush you.” 

Alarm was pushing adrenaline through Arthur’s system, keeping him awake and alert through the exchange despite his pain and injuries. Now his breathing grew even more haggard, his eyes widened, and he vainly attempted to rise and run at what he saw next. Merlin began to  _ripple,_ a great trembling coursing through him so quickly and violently he looked like he was vanishing. The warlock  _grew,_ shifting and stretching, and throwing off light in all directions—Arthur had to close his eyes against it, and when he opened them Merlin was gone, and a silver and blue dragon just over half Kilgharrah’s size was taking to the skies.  _  
_

The new dragon’s scales glittered like sapphires in the mingling moon and sunlight of dusk, the silver glinting across his wings and almost seeming to glow. It roared and flew in figure-eights above Kilgharrah, who was still trying to take off. The great dragon’s rust-and-steel colored scales were fading to dull browns and greys; some of them were falling off, and the differences in the age and health of the dragons only grew more obvious as Kilgharrah lifted from the ground.

The young dragon dove toward Kilgharrah as he took off, slicing at him with razor-sharp wingtips and furious talons. Kilgharrah screamed in pain as his scales shattered on the impact, pieces of them falling to the ground. He had misjudged his own strength, and underestimated the young dragon’s rage. He was slower than the silver as well, and couldn’t turn as quickly or neatly.

He shot a long stream of fire at the younger, but it flew straight through the blast, shouting a very human spell to protect it from the flames. It struck at Kilgharrah’s snout, dragging its claws across the larger dragon’s face. Kilgharrah screamed again as blood began to drip down his chin. He began shouting a dragon’s spell, the only ones he could use, turning his breath to ice, but the silver dove beneath the icicles and locked claws with Kilgharrah’s own. It used its own momentum from the high dive, and the larger dragon’s weight and broken concentration, to throw Kilgharrah into the ground. 

That was all it took. Kilgharrah started to stand again, and shouted in pain—he’d landed on the side of his right wing. The silver dove at him, screaming something in dragontongue as it fell. It pinned the larger dragon to the ground by the throat, finishing its spell before Kilgharrah could thrash himself free. The larger dragon began to shimmer and change just as Merlin had moments before—first he shrunk, then began throwing light as he changed into a human-looking  _thing_ with scaly brown skin  and pointed ears and a sidhe’s eyes. Another word from the silver and Kilgharrah’s brown scales ran together into smooth, normal human skin. The dragon had a bloody elderly man with a broken arm trapped beneath its claws before Arthur could process what he’d seen. 

“ _Tell me,”_ the dragon commanded, with Merlin’s voice. It was harsher, raspier, deeper than usual, but there was no question anymore that the blue and silver dragon was, somehow,  _Merlin._

The man’s still far-too-reptilian eyes flashed. “You need the dragon who forged the blade.” 

"So what do you need to do?" 

"Oh, it wasn’t me who supplied the flame," Kilgharrah said, smiling slyly through his salt-and-pepper beard. 

"…Aithusa? It can’t be. She’s too young to make fire." 

"No, not Aithusa," the man said. 

The silver growled. “There isn’t anyone else.” 

"There’s  _you.”_

"…What?" Merlin tensed, his head recoiling back. "Th-that’s not possible. I never did—I wouldn’t—" 

Kilgharrah laughed. “You don’t think Morgana did  _nothing_ but knock the little dragon unconscious when she sealed you in that cave, do you? She stole fire from you, my dear little hatchling.” 

"N-no. No, it can’t—" 

“ _You_ killed Arthur, Merlin. In more ways than one.” 

Merlin’s neck whipped around to make sure Arthur was still breathing. He winced when he saw how terrified of him his friend looked, and how the bandages across his chest were turning red from split stitches. He had to act quickly. He turned back to Kilgharrah. “What must I do, then?” 

"Arthur must forgive you for creating the sword, and he has to  _mean_ it. He can’t simply say the words.” 

The silver closed his eyes in anguish. “…Then what?” 

"Your best healing spell. Draconian, not human, you half-breed, and don’t you dare try mixing the two again." 

Merlin growled at him one last time, then rose and began to walk on all four feet to Arthur, not bothering to change back. 

"Merlin…" he heard Kilgharrah call, sounding at once as old and weary as he looked. "I’m going to die, Merlin…" 

He took another step toward the dying Pendragon and paused. “Then die, father. I don’t care anymore.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of asking for generic prompts on tumblr. One of my good friends made a simple request: an Arthur and Merlin finale AU. So here is an AU where dragons can be people too, Merlin won't stand for Kilgharrah's vile manipulation anymore, and the two are much closer kin than the show made them out to be. And the ending is intentionally ambiguous.


End file.
